Room 6: The Dawn of Photography

Scotland played a leading role in the early years of photography when, in 1839, William Henry Fox Talbot invented the Calotype process, a method of creating a paper negative from which multiple prints could be made. He took out a patent in England but not in Scotland and as a result, experimentation with the new medium flourished north of the Border. 

In 1843 Robert Adamson, a young chemist from St Andrews, where much of the scientific enthusiasm for the new discovery was concentrated, opened the first photographic studio in Edinburgh. He entered into partnership with the painter David Octavius Hill and, over the following years until Adamson’s untimely death in 1848, they produced what are still regarded as some of the greatest photographs ever made. 

Through their portraits in particular, Hill and Adamson demonstrated that the camera was not merely a scientific recording instrument but, in the right hands, could become a powerful means of artistic expression. 

It was probably through D. O. Hill, who was Secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy, that a remarkable collection of works by important pioneering photographers was acquired. These include numerous picturesque views of Edinburgh, studies of Iona by the Scottish doctor Thomas Keith, and images of French medieval monuments by the great French pioneer Gustave Le Gray. Most of the framed photographs are modern prints, as the original prints are preserved within two spectacular albums gifted to the RSA by Sir Edmund Findlay in 1931.